Who is interested in having nightmares tonight?

Because Uncle Matthew is going to give them to you. It's a little piece of brilliance called the Cat With Hands and is a semi-stop-motion short.

As the Daily What describes it the film "tells the story of a decidedly creepy cat with human hands who meets a young boy and promptly rips his face off to wear as his own.

Then things get weird."

Sweet dreams.

The Cat with Hands from amenhaton on Vimeo.

I bet he didn't see that coming

We all know that our investor and stockbroker class are the best and brightest in the world. I mean, they certainly won't stop telling us that. Sure they didn't foresee the problems they were creating, the money they were about to lose, and the economies they were going to toilet, but these people aren't psychics, so their failures can't be held against them.

But what about actual psychic investors? I wonder how they would do in this economic climate.

The SEC has charged Sean David Morton, a self-described "natural psychic, trained Remote Viewer, intuitive consultant, investigative reporter, and accomplished award winning director, screenwriter and film and TV producer," with securities fraud

Morton, who is known as "America's Prophet" allegedly solicited investors through a newsletter in which he claimed, "I have called ALL the highs and lows of the market giving EXACT DATES for rises and crashes over the last 14 years."

C'mon SEC, he foresaw EVERY high and low in the market! EXACT DATES! He has this picture of himself psychoflexing with a giant white cat standing on his shoulders. He runs a "specialized cattery". He wrote, directed and starred in Joe Killionaire. Triple threat! Shouldn't you be hiring him? Why arrest him? Isn't that a stellar enough resume to be allowed to handle and invest millions of dollars?

The SEC charges that Morton and his wife allegedly "diverted at least $240,000 of investor funds" to their Prophecy Research Institute. The SEC complaint charitably refers to that as a "religious organization."

Wait. So it's OK to claim you're a psychic who can foresee market changes, earthquakes, and election results and still be licensed and regulated by the SEC and allowed to take millions to "invest". But so help you God if you take some of that money really smart people have given you and divert into your prophecy research religious arm. Claiming mystical powers is allowed in this country, but you better do some damn fine accounting and bookkeeping to back it up.

So in the end, what is the difference between Morton and any of the financial geniuses who shitted the economy? Uh, he used the phrase "psychic" and gave mystical powers the credit for his nonexistent ability to see the shifts and changes in the market instead of using a phrase like "heuristic market driven analysis" or some other such professional, mathematical sounding authority to claim a nonexistent ability to see the shifts and changes in the market. I also don't think John Thain ever did a Tai-Chi pose with a cat on his shoulders. Oooh, and Morton doesn't have any friends in the Treasury Department, although he does know Adam West and Sting. Also, Morton didn't lose nearly as much money as the non psychic experts, though he will be doing considerably more jail time.

But otherwise? No real difference. Just where, towards what areas, and to what end these men were appropriating their giant balls. Hard to see why it all came toppling down.

Chart of the day

click to embiggen

From Zach Klein comes this graphical representation of how the US ranks in regards to price and speed of the intarwubs/intertubes. #15 with a bullet! It isn't just health care where most of the world bangs us in the behind. Take that, United Kingdom! You may have cheaper health care resulting in better lives for your citizens, but how fast can you find and watch a new keyboard cat video...and at what cost?

Headline of the day

Cat registered as hypnotherapist

I'm not sure, does this degrade the profession of hypnotherapy or is that not possible? All I know is that this certainly throws into question the high esteem I hold for people with accreditation from the United Fellowship of Hypnotherapists.

The kitty, George, was certified with three separate organizations by a comedy TV presenter based on a phony certificate from the fake organization Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists. Man, that acronym so hackneyed (SCAM...T) it should have made it into our broken news piece from today.

Late night cat video jamboree

Don't ever say we didn't enlighten your lives with cat related brilliance.

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